Excerpt

Forgive Us Our Debts

After three-and-a-half years together, George Gurley and his girlfriend, Hilly, found themselves in couples therapy one day, confiding their insecurities and miscommunications to a psychiatrist named Dr. Selman. Gurley, then a reporter at The New York Observer, told his co-workers about his first session, and an idea was born:

“It was [executive editor] Peter Stevenson’s idea,” Gurley recalls. “He said, Why don’t you do it as a column" I thought I was being pranked, that I would go to therapy and this would never run in the Observer.”

But ran it did, roughly once a week for 40 months. And years later “George & Hilly” remains required reading of the relationship-column genre, offering an uncensored look into the neurotic psyches, irresponsible spending, and substance abuse of two seemingly normal New Yorkers.

“The book is to make people feel good about themselves,” Gurley says. “A lot of the good aspects of the relationship are not in there, because it’s boring. They should laugh and think: It could be a lot worse.”

Below, an excerpt from Gurley’s new book, George & Hilly: The Anatomy of a Relationship (Gallery Books). In the chapter entitled “Forgive Us Our Debts,” George and Hilly attend several Debtors Anonymous meetings per orders from Gurley’s mother, only to find they may be in way over their heads.

The prospect of joining Debtors Anonymous excited me about as much as a half-eaten burrito fished from a Dumpster. I did a little research on the organization, concluded that it was another mystical 12-step cult, and braced myself for a ration of hand-holding and mumbo jumbo. My skepticism was aroused by the notion of abundance. According to the D.A. line, we live in an “abundant universe.” The cosmos is a safe place. If you work for it, outer darkness will provide what you need.

I found that concept hard to digest. People are getting beheaded or buried under tsunamis every day. Would they agree with the proposition that the universe is safe? It’s hard to believe in abundance if cat food makes your mouth water. Lots of people work hard and end up penniless. Personally, I suspect the universe would as soon pick your pocket as pour riches on your head. Luck is as important as hard work, and blind faith sets you up for getting suckered. On the other hand, I realized that for the last 20 years I’d been a believer in abundance and a higher power—my mom. I’d gotten used to the delusion that however recklessly I lived, she’d come to the rescue.

One concept that D.A. pushed that did sound relevant to Hilly and me was “terminal vagueness,” a euphemism for spendthrifts and people like us who are incapable or unwilling to monitor their finances. I loved that expression. It evoked an image of zombies, groping their way through life in an impenetrable fog. I couldn’t imagine a better description of Hilly and me. We were vague about everything—time, purpose, compass direction, feelings. The moment we wake up, we put our vague suits on. Terminal vagueness certainly epitomized my inability to do anything definite, to make plans, to meet deadlines, to organize my life. Neither Hilly nor I kept track of our cash flow or balanced our checkbooks. We were consistently broke or in some kind of financial crisis. We never saved or thought about the future. We were compulsive shoppers. We lived on the edge, in chaos, paycheck to paycheck.

D.A.’s weapon against terminal vagueness was “clarity and awareness.” The beginning of wisdom is to develop a clear picture of how much money you have and how much you owe. Who could argue with that? It was like saying, “First, just stop being terminally vague.” But how exactly do you acquire clarity and awareness?

According to one of the D.A. insights, we deadbeats “exult in our defects.” That had a certain resonance. It reminded me of the game I played when negotiating with my mom, flaunting my screwups. Another thing that appealed to me in the D.A. literature was its emphasis on our culture of consumption and reckless spending and the seductive power of advertising. These bogeymen offered excuses to anyone who had a problem with prudence and frugality. Also, some of the D.A. literature was irrefutable stuff that offered no openings for mockery. Keep records of every cent owed, spent, earned. Make a “spending plan.” Pay your bills when they’re due. Don’t borrow from family members or friends. I couldn’t argue with that. The only thing that stood in my way was lack of discipline. I was still terminally vague about how I was going to become disciplined. First, get discipline, George. Or something like that.

The problem of the moment was paying the rent. I needed the money and my mother had laid down the law. Two trips to D.A. per week or no final handout. Our first meeting was held in a rec center. We entered a lobby filled with kids who’d just finished swim-team practice. It was a rowdy, festive scene, the picture of middle-class well-being—cheerful greetings, high fives, and hugs all around, kids working toward goals, parents motivating them with cheers. We felt like outcasts when we approached the desk clerk and asked in a whisper where the Debtors Anonymous meeting was to be held.

We were directed to a large, desolate room filled with metal folding chairs and card tables stacked against the walls. Hilly suddenly became self-conscious. She was carrying an alligator handbag that sold for about $18,000 and wearing a $12,000 bracelet—both items borrowed (naturally) from work.

An older woman bustled into the room and began speaking to us in a British accent before she even sat down. In a manic, nervous-cheery way, she spilled out details of her tragic, debt-ridden existence. Financial pressure had led her to “inadvertently” spend every cent she had on useless things: tea cozies, pillows, kitchen appliances she’d never use or even remove from their packaging. She had a passion for credit cards that offered “automatically approved cash advances.” Now, here she was in a gloomy basement confessing to two strangers. She was well into her 50s, completely alone, a veteran of Clutterers Anonymous (for compulsive hoarders, not to be confused with Messies Anonymous). She was terrified that if D.A. couldn’t save her, she was going to get carted off to debtors’ prison.

Her mention of debtors’ prison piqued my interest. I’d always thought those institutions didn’t make much sense. How could you pay off your debts if you were rotting in a cell? But I suspected that the threat of debtors’ prison would do more to improve my clarity and awareness than holding hands with other spendthrifts in Debtors Anonymous. Suddenly, I remembered reading that Roosevelt Island, where we were presently domiciled, was once the site of a debtors’ prison—where Soapy, the vagrant in a classic O. Henry short story, longs to spend the winter but can’t get himself arrested.

When the moderator entered the room, we immediately christened her the Sad Girl. Ordinary melancholy would have looked ecstatic by comparison. The look she wore was one of knowing despair. It was enough to chase any rumor of hope from the room. She was carrying some kind of a Tupperware container and a few notebooks that looked official. She glanced at us with an expression that seemed to say, “I know you two. You don’t even have to tell me your pitiful story.” She was nicely dressed, however, which didn’t square with the long soliloquy she delivered about her pathological drive to “underearn.”

When her sad tale was done, she rattled off the 12 steps of Debtors Anonymous. In short, we were powerless over debt, our lives had become unmanageable, only a power greater than ourselves could rescue us. We were exhorted to make a “moral inventory” of ourselves, to publicly admit the exact nature of our wrongs, to beseech God to remove our shortcomings, and to make amends to all the people we’d wronged. Finally, after experiencing our own spiritual awakening, we were expected to spread the message to other compulsive debtors. All in all, it was a prizewinning downer. We left the first meeting in a defiant mood.

“They’re like a bunch of granola-crunching hippies trying to appear all high-and-mighty,” said Hilly. “I’m not saying that because I’m in denial. I’m not hiding anything. I know what I’m doing. I just withhold financial information that I fear will incite anger . . . in you.”

I stuck with my own script: God doesn’t have all that much interest in the financial salvation of small-time losers. But after a little reflection, we both recognized some truth in the D.A. message. “Keeping one’s numbers” is a metaphor for general awareness of responsibilities. “Clarity” (in our case, solvency) can purify any bad habit that pollutes your life. It can be applied to anything, from paying bills to returning phone calls to being on time. It has to do with putting away childish things and growing up. The idea of becoming an adult at age 40 made me feel foolish. But the prospect of becoming a new person was exhilarating, too. And the idea of becoming adults together tickled Hilly and me. It was a project. After all, for both of us, it was long overdue. We had one secret power that would help us—the ability to have fun, even in a prosaic endeavor such as this. So despite D.A.’s cultlike ethos, we made a pact to get what we needed out of it while modifying the rules to suit our needs. That included our practice of attending a bar before each session.

At the next meeting, when it was Hilly’s turn to share, I was transfixed. Her finances were a mystery to me. I suspected at least a third of Hilly’s income went to clothes. My mom had recently noted, for my ears only, that she’d never seen Hilly in the same outfit twice. Did she owe 50, a hundred grand? I had no idea. For all I knew, she’d been a teenage kleptomaniac and done time in juvenile detention. She was usually so secretive about money matters that I expected her to be incoherent or speechless. The opposite happened. She ran off at the mouth. It was as if some dam had burst.

“My money problems began when I started working in the world of high fashion,” she said. “My office at Manolo Blahnik was connected to the store, where salespeople made salaries close to 300 K based on commissions selling shoes. The temptations and pressure to compete with them were overwhelming. I was surrounded by expensive trinkets that cast a spell over me. I wanted, needed, deserved to have them. They became necessary to my sense of well-being. If I was proud of something I’d done at work, if I’d had a fight with my boyfriend, if I’d experienced some annoyance on the subway, it triggered my shopping instinct.” She always purchased her way back to equilibrium. If it was a little crisis, an $11 box of cough drops would do. A more serious upheaval might require a $150 lunch at Aquavit, or a $500 dress at Intermix.

Hilly’s romance with credit cards began just before she left Manolo Blahnik. She maxed out her first credit cards at Barneys and Bergdorf’s in months. When she went to work for Louis Vuitton, she got a corporate American Express card. In this particularly reckless period of her life, she spent way over her $10,000 limit. She was still paying it off years after she left the company.

“I used to come home exhausted from work,” she said. “And by the time I climbed five flights of stairs I was too tired to open the mail. Besides, bills bored me. The thought of opening and reviewing the damage depressed me. Soon there were unopened stacks of bills everywhere.”

It didn’t take long for things to get out of control. She started asking friends for loans, $20 here, $40 there. Her parents were shocked by the news that she was living off mustard sandwiches, but they knew from past experience that if they sent her money, she’d spend it on useless things. So they sent her care packages containing such things as toilet paper and tuna, which she’d feed to the cats.

When Hilly got an offer to work closely with Donatella Versace, she quit her job. Then the Versace deal fell through. Hilly was left jobless. She had to cash in the five years of profit sharing she’d earned at Manolo Blahnik at a loss of over 50 percent because of the penalty fees.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said. “But I was desperate. I applied for more credit cards and maxed them all out almost immediately. I became so accustomed to finding eviction notices on my front door, I reacted as if they were greeting cards. After six months unemployed, I finally got a job at Newsweek. But it paid $20,000 less than I’d been making at Louis Vuitton.” She fell further and further behind. Collection agencies finally gave up on her and even stopped sending threatening letters. In a way, she won those battles. But they left her with an abysmal credit rating.

“I remember being late for work one day,” she said. “When I got to the subway station, I realized I didn’t have enough money on my MetroCard. I didn’t have enough change in my wallet for the fare.” A homeless man saw her frantically rummaging in her purse. He motioned with his own illicit MetroCard that he would swipe her through. “I was wearing the season’s latest 12-hundred-dollar boots from Chanel—and begging from a homeless man. It was strange. I didn’t see the irony in that until I told a friend later on.”

Still, she maintained a cavalier attitude toward spending. She expected other people to understand her priorities. A new dress or a trip to the beauty parlor came before rent. Creditors further down the ladder should be patient and wait their turn. Among the things she considers necessities are the care of her blond tresses, which she entrusts to the celebrity hairdresser Michael Murphy. He gives her a discount when he can. All the same, her once-a-month trips to Mr. Murphy cost $250 to $575. Twice a year she gets highlights for $600.

“I have the vagueness thing,” she said. “I can’t tell you right now exactly how much or whom I owe because I’m so successful at wiping it out of my mind. I probably have 40 cents in my wallet right now, a bank balance of about negative $3, and some foreign currency in coins I can’t exchange. And that’s it. You’d think I’d learn, but I don’t.”

It was my turn. According to instinct, I seized the opportunity to perform, showcasing my foibles to entertain the audience and win points for laughs. In other words, to “exult in my defects.” I referred to myself as a chronic debtor, slacker, and inveterate pauper. I recounted past experiences of hard times. “In the summer of 1981, I scrounged for change in family vehicles and couches to finance my addiction to space Invaders and Pac-Man. In 1991, I wanted to try college without classes and focused on beer, Frisbee, girls, and live music instead. I stole bacon and ground beef from my fraternity, got caught, and was shown the door. I got fired from a dishwashing job for walking off with a miniature bottle of Heinz 57. I daydream about winning the lottery and enjoy buying things with a pocketful of pennies. It’s not the worst thing in the world to be broke. It can be fun.” The Debtors Anonymous congregation cast stony looks at me. Not funny. Thumbs-down. I tried a more sober approach, recounting my travails with the bank in the form of a polemic against predatory lenders.

“I began digging my own grave when the bank gave me a line of credit on my debit card. They advertised it as a benign device to cover accidental overdrafts. Of course, the real reason was to dangle available credit in front of ‘valued customers,’ a large percentage of whom are probably like me, low-income losers. Sooner or later we suckers dip into that line of credit—‘Whee! Lookee here: free money!’—and fail to keep up with the monthly payments. That means penalties, fees, and other forms of bloodletting.”

I dipped into the honeypot and twice ended up owing over $3,000. I swore off credit cards for years. But after losing my wallet in Rome, I stopped by a bank branch to get a temporary ATM card. There, a sweet account lady persuaded me to get a credit card “in case of emergency”—despite hearing my whole bad-debt history with her bank. She actually tried to talk me into a $10,000 limit. I had to play the conservative, responsible adult and persuaded her to limit me to $1,400.

The card didn’t budge from my wallet for a year. Patiently, it waited to be activated, whispering, “Don’t forget, whenever you need me, I’m always here.” During a food shortage, I finally succumbed, summoned the genie, and charged a cartful of groceries. I actually started talking to the card, thanking it for sparing me from starvation. We began a romance, my credit card and I. It was like being in love with a nymphomaniac. The card couldn’t get enough of being used. Soon, I’d run up a massive debt.

For the next two years, I made monthly payments to the loan sharks while still owing them an average of $950. When a freelance check made me momentarily flush, I decided to pay off the entire balance. It wasn’t as easy as I’d assumed. When I announced my noble intentions to the bank representative, a profound silence fell on the other end of the line. The rep told me I’d be charged a fee if I paid off the balance (I taped numerous phone calls with the bank representatives). It sounded like a threat. Then, I got disconnected, possibly a ploy to discourage me. On the second go-round, I reached the Automated Lady, who promised that there would be no fee. Automated Lady transferred me to another rep, who contradicted her. I would pay a fee, there was no escape.

“No wonder Americans are up to their gills in debt,” I said, concluding my morality tale with an evangelical appeal. “Banks are dope pushers. They don’t want us to be prudent and pay off our loans. They want to get us hooked. We are their victims.” The Sad Girl, with her rueful smile, said something about “grandiose thinking” and the tendency of spendthrifts to wail about how unfairly they’re treated. I felt rebuked, but justly so. Under normal circumstances, I would have shot back some sardonic rejoinder. But in the nonthreatening ambience of D.A., surrounded by other misfits, I shrugged it off and considered myself from a detached perspective. I was the one who didn’t mind the cash register. No one else was to blame. Perhaps I was finally able to get the picture because I wasn’t going to be judged and condemned to eternal flames by my fellow sinners.

When the session was over, the six of us stood in a circle holding clammy hands, chanting, “Keep coming back! It works if you work at it!” It was exactly the kind of thing that usually made me want to gag. But I joined in like a good sport. I understood that it ran against the D.A. code, but I was having fun. Hilly stuck around to ask the ladies about beginners’ meetings and how to get a sponsor. I waited while she exchanged numbers. She had so many questions, they almost had to push her out.

Walking through Central Park, she was on a cloud. “Oh, it was so cool! It was really, really great!”

In spite of the creepy chanting, I actually agreed with her. I admitted that I took some solace in hearing that we weren’t the only fiscally challenged people in the world.

One member of the group told Hilly that she thanked her “higher power” for having made it there that night and regretted that she hadn’t started 30 years ago. The Sad Girl told Hilly that she was doing fine “so far” and gave her points for being brave. Sad Girl reminded Hilly to keep records of every cent she earned and spent every single day. Once a month, during a “pressure relief ” session, all that data would be fed into a spreadsheet, which a sponsor would look over to make sure nothing was being neglected.

“There’s something very basic and nurturing about this stuff,” Hilly gushed on the red bus heading to our building. “The other members make me feel like they understand and empathize. They say I can fix it. In the past I’ve always lied to myself and other people about finances because I just felt it was easier than trying to get to the bottom of it. It’s the first time I’ve been able to admit that stuff without feeling like the biggest loser in the world.”

I, too, was amazed by her frankness. In five minutes, she’d revealed more about her financial history than I’d been able to pry out of her in the past eight years.

But suddenly she grew thoughtful. “I’m worried that if we don’t follow the rules, I’ll get scared away. I don’t want to go home and have you grill me about what just happened. I want to play by their rules.”

Now, I was a little alarmed at the radical change that seemed to have come over her. I’d noticed that psychobabble and the jargon of self-help had been creeping into her vocabulary recently. Words such as boundaries kept popping up. Did that mean that I was going to have to stop violating her space, trespassing on her feelings, trying to force her to change according to my designs?

“No, no, you do what you want,” I said, trying to sound as noncontrolling as possible. “You’re on your own here. Well, both of us are.”

“That’s why I don’t want to mess it up and I’m treading carefully because I don’t want to get into these subjects without knowing enough.”

I was silent for a moment. Then I tried to float a skepticism balloon. “There sure isn’t much back-and-forth debate in D.A. meetings.”

Hilly took that as a positive. “Right, it’s got its own orderly structure.”

“It’s kinda weird because I’m so used to being able to jump in, ask questions, and steer the conversation.”

“It’s probably the most I’ve ever been able to speak without you interrupting me.”

The Sad Girl hadn’t made me feel defensive, but Hilly was beginning to. “Because I’m not allowed to interrupt?”

“Right. I think D.A. is going to have a good influence on us. It’s fun because we’re on neutral territory and listening to other people, and it’s not even an option for us to speak.”

I wasn’t so sure. I felt scolded. And threatened. It looked as if D.A. was going to smoke me out and force me to play on a level field. I wasn’t going to be able to get away with some of the manipulating ploys I used on Hilly. Was I going to have to become unselfish? Was I going to lose control?

Strangely, that prospect didn’t seem so dreadful. Instead, it presented an option I’d never considered: liberation from the straitjacket of my insecurity and narcissism. It was a minor epiphany. For a moment, I felt as if I had awakened from Bottom’s Dream. But I was still an ass.

Back home, we had one of the best nights since moving in together. We acted like grown-ups. I left Hilly alone to do whatever she wanted for two hours. She chose to work for 25 minutes and spent the rest of the time in the bathroom. Because there were no whiny complaints, outbursts, or threats (“That’s it, I’m getting my own place!”), Hilly was able to relax and not worry that she might land in the doghouse. After a marathon shower, she joined me in the living room and explained how she’d just saved $30. Without interrupting, I took in all the details of Hilly’s pedicure without wincing, even though one of my phobias was of exposed feet.

“First I filed my nails, then put a cuticle softener on each toe,” she began. “I pushed away the dead cuticles, then put on an exfoliating scrub and massaged it into my feet, to get rid of the dead, dry skin.” More details about “pumicing,” self-tanning, lotion, and three varieties of nail polish followed. The point was she didn’t feel rushed so it was fun for her. And what did we learn from this experience?

“Boundaries!” she said. Instead of exploding with annoyance, I discovered that I could treat her somewhat barmy dissertation as harmless amusement. After all, this was Hilly. Why not love her for what she was?

“It’s funny,” I said. “In the meeting, I was thinking how strange it was to be engaging in social interaction somewhere other than a bar.” On cue, my cell phone buzzed. I read the message: U out tnite? Might stop by Milady’s.

I told Hilly that I wasn’t interested in another debauch. I answered the text message with a proud Nt 2nite. For once, I saw the obvious connection between my overspending and those nights out, which can set me back 200 bucks, not to mention two days for the hangover and detox. Hilly gave me a Cheshire-cat smile. She’d heard these brave insights and resolutions many times before.

“Good boy,” she said. “It’s funny, tonight I have been drinking at a much slower pace, not with the same . . .”

“Voraciousness?”

“No, I’m just sort of enjoying it. I’m sipping rather than gulping.”

“That’s very interesting. I wonder if D.A. is a gateway to A.A.?”

“I hope not.”

“We can fight it,” I said. The one thing I wasn’t ready to contemplate was giving up the bottle.

“I have to tell you,” she said. “I know I bring a ton of it on myself by being irritating, but one reason I’m not guzzling is because of the lack of shouting.”

I felt an argument coming on. “Really? O.K. I’ll stop. Sorry. Maybe I need more self-control? And to give you more alone Hilly free time? Not always be here? What are some of the things that get me all worked up?”

“It usually starts as soon as I come home on an average workday. If you’re here, you’ve been here all day, and my arrival triggers something in your brain, that now it’s fun time. And I want to have fun. Some nights I may say to heck with it and do whatever you want. But that means, for instance, the less time I have for my feet. Really, tonight was the first time I’ve looked at them in six months without wanting to chop them off.”

“So you’d like to spend more time with your feet and less with me?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“What—do you talk to them when you’re in there? Do you have conversations with them?”

“You’re raising your voice.”

“Of course there are 10 of them, and only one of me.” I thought: jilted for the sake of her toes. My cell phone buzzed. I read the message: Come on, pussy, you’re gonna miss out! Temptation mingled with mounting irritation. Since I’d come so far in just a couple of sessions with D.A., maybe I could handle this one night on the town. Besides, I needed to make a statement.

I needed to reclaim some turf. After all, I had my own space, too. On my way to Milady’s, I tried to make contact with my higher power: one day at a time. And I reminded myself that each of us is the captain of three ships: partnership, friendship, and lovership.